The United Nations climate change negotiations live to fight another day, and Latin American countries have played important roles in their advance. The results of the Lima climate conference, or “COP20,” last December are generally considered a success—albeit a very limited one.  

The host nation Peru pulled one out of the bag at the talks—while a serious breakdown seemed imminent as time ran out, a last minute agreement was produced two days after the conference was scheduled to finish.

By Marcela Jaramillo and Camila Bustos

Here we share a summary of Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos speech at the UN Climate Summit and our reflection on it. While we praise Santos rhetoric calling for a progressive and ambitious agreement in 2015, we wonder if his commitment to sustainable development will also apply to domestic policies on fossil fuel exploration, particularly fracking.

By Guy Edwards and Jakob Skovgaard

Christiana Figueres, the head of the UN body on climate change, visited Lima last week as Peru prepares to host the annual UN climate talks in December. Figueres was vocal in her comments that the Lima conference needs to secure a draft agreement before the deadline summit in Paris next year to create a new climate agreement. The chief of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change commented that government efforts to confront climate change are woefully inadequate.

She also cited recent research by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which affirms that the window of opportunity to keep global temperature within 2C and avoid dangerous climate impacts is rapidly closing. This reminds us of the relentless pressure facing presidents of the annual UN climate Conference of the Parties (COP).

April 16, 2014 - Time: High Level Plenary Sessions 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m.

Location: Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University -111 Thayer Street - Providence, RI

The conference will be live-streamed and will be available to view after the conference. 

Description:

The conference “Governing Climate Change” will take place on April 16, 2014 at Brown University. The conference is co-organized by the Climate and Development Lab and Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

By Guy Edwards and J. Timmons Roberts 

China’s rapidly increasing investment, trade and loans in Latin America may be entrenching high-carbon development pathways in the region, a trend scarcely mentioned in policy circles. High-carbon activities include the extraction of fossil fuels and other natural resources, expansion of large-scale agriculture and the energy-intensive stages of processing natural resources into intermediate goods.

This paper addresses three examples, including Chinese investments in Venezuela’s oil sector and a Costa Rican oil refinery, and Chinese investment in and purchases of Brazilian soybeans.